Spring 2025 Courses

Last updated March 11, 2025.

All course offerings can be confirmed on the Directory of Classes and are subject to change. Please check this page and the Directory of Classes for updates. Past course offerings can be found in the Courses dropdown menu.

*NOTES*

—MA and PhD students in the Department of Philosophy CANNOT count an undergraduate course towards their degree.

—All students must receive the instructor's permission to register for individual supervised research/independent study and quodlibetal study sections. These sections are blocked for registration. Once you have received permission from the instructor, please email them that you have been added to the waitlist. The instructor will then admit you to the section from the waitlist.

Undergraduate Lectures

PHIL UN1001 Introduction to Philosophy
Survey of some of the central problems, key figures, and great works in both traditional and contemporary philosophy. Topics and texts will vary with instructor and semester.
Section 001
T. Carman
MW 10:10am-11:25am; 302 Barnard Hall
Section 002
C. Prodoehl
TR 2:40pm-3:55pm; 237 Milbank Hall (Barnard)

PHIL UN1101 Methods of Philosophic Thought
T. Pincin
TR 4:10pm-5:25pm; 417 Mathematics Building

PHIL UN1401 Introduction to Logic
C. Prodoehl
TR 11:40am-12:55pm; 408 Zankel
Explicit criteria for recognizing valid and fallacious arguments, together with various methods for schematizing discourse for the purpose of logical analysis. Illustrative material taken from science and everyday life.

PHIL UN2108 Philosophy & History
L. Goehr
MW 8:40am-9:55am; 330 Uris Hall

PHIL UN2201 History of Philosophy II
C. Bowman
TR 1:10pm-2:25pm; 405 Milbank Hall (Barnard)
Prerequisites: PHIL UN2211 Required Discussion Section (0 points). PHIL UN2101 is not a prerequisite for this course. Exposition and analysis of the metaphysics, epistemology, and natural philosophy of the major philosophers from Aquinas through Kant. Authors include Aquinas, Galileo, Gassendi, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. This course has unrestricted enrollment.

PHIL UN3131 Aristotle
D. Jagannathan
TR 10:10am-11:25am; 330 Uris Hall

PHIL UN3351 Phenomenology & Existentialism
T. Carman
MW 2:40pm-3:55pm; 302 Barnard Hall

PHIL UN3411 Symbolic Logic
A. Varzi
MW 10:10am-11:25am; 402 Chandler
Corequisites: PHIL UN3413 Required Discussion Section (0 points). Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable.

PHIL UN3551 Philosophy of Science
D. Albert
MW 4:10pm-5:25pm; 330 Uris Hall
Philosophical problems within science and about the nature of scientific knowledge in the 17th-20th centuries. Sample problems: causation and scientific explanation; induction and real kinds; verification and falsification; models, analogies and simulations; the historical origins of the modern sciences; scientific revolutions; reductionism and supervenience; differences between physics, biology and the social sciences; the nature of life; cultural evolution; human nature; philosophical issues in cosmology.

PHIL UN3655 Topics in Cognitive Science in Philosophy
B. Fleig-Goldstein
TR 1:20pm-2:25pm; 303 Uris Hall
This course examines the extent to which various cognitive capacities are innate versus learned, focusing on how recent developments in artificial intelligence bear on this debate. We will explore contemporary deep learning architectures, current obstacles to improved performance, and efforts to reduce the size of these models and training datasets (such as the BabyLM challenge). We will also consider the potential for sensory grounding and multimodal integration to help solve AI's problems. In addition, the course will cover the Meno paradox; empiricism versus rationalism in the history of philosophy; current biological perspectives on heredity; estimations of the size of hereditary pathways, brains, and environmental data; the distinction between domain-general and domain-specific cognition; competence versus performance; the Chomsky hierarchy and universal approximation theorems; and poverty of the stimulus arguments.

PHIL UN3685 Philosophy of Language
M. Fusco
TR 11:40am-12:55pm; 330 Uris Hall
This course is a survey of analytic philosophy of language. It addresses central issues about the nature of meaning, including: sense and reference, speech acts, pragmatics, and the relationship between meaning and use, meaning and context, and meaning and truth.

PHIL UN3711 Ethics
F. Russell
MW 1:10pm-2:25pm; 405 Milbank Hall (Barnard)
Prerequisites: one course in philosophy. Corequisites: PHIL V3711 Required Discussion Section (0 points). This course is mainly an introduction to three influential approaches to normative ethics: utilitarianism, deontological views, and virtue ethics. We also consider the ethics of care, and selected topics in meta-ethics.

PHIL UN3716 Topics in Ethics
The Ethics of Nonviolence
M. Moody-Adams
MW 2:40pm-3:55pm; 414 Pupin Laboratories

PHIL UN3769 Living, Dying, and the Meaning of Life
K. Vogt, L. Dugdale, I. Rottenberg
TR 11:40am-12:55pm; AUD Earl Hall
Bringing together scholars from the fields of Philosophy, Medicine, Ethics, and Religion, this course
exposes students to modes of inquiry that can help to answer central questions that are often elusive and/or
unconsidered: What constitutes a good human life? What do I need to be truly happy? How does the fact
that I will one day die impact how I should live today? This interdisciplinary course provides a rare
opportunity to consider how a wide variety of thinkers and writers have approached these questions, while
also engaging with them in a personal way within our contemporary context. Lectures will be combined
with group discussion and a weekend retreat, creating possibilities for interpersonal engagement and deep
learning.

PHIL UN3960 Epistemology
J. Collins
TR 8:40am-9:55am; 141 Uris Hall
Corequisites: PHIL W3963 Required Discussion Section (0 points). What can we know? What is knowledge? What are the different kinds of knowledge? We will read classic and contemporary texts for insight into these questions.

Undergraduate Seminars

PHIL UN3872 Personal Identity in Parallel Universes
C. Yau
F 2:10pm-4:00pm; 212A Lewisohn
Imagine you travel to a parallel universe, where you happen to find a planet like the Earth, where you find a city like New York, where you find a university like Columbia University, where you find a person like you. Call that person X. You are staring at X. What is the relation between you and X, the other-worldly you? This is the famous “problem of transworld identity” hotly debated since the 1960s. In this course, we will be reading the two most influential books in contemporary analytic philosophy: Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1972) and David Lewis’s On the Plurality of Worlds (1986) – where two completely different answers are forcefully argued for. Kripke argues that you and X are one and the same person. (If you kill X, will you die?) Lewis argues that you and X are merely similar strangers. (Not unlike you encounter someone who looks like you in another country.) We will start with Ted Sider’s Four-Dimensionalism (2001) – the most influential book on what turns out to be a closely analogous problem: identity over time. All these will lead up to a completely novel theory: Five-Dimensionalism (5D), which argues that you and X are parts of the same person, like your left hand and right hand are both part of your body. According to 5D, you are five-dimensional, extended across 3D space, time, and possible worlds. You are all the possible yous. There is no prerequisite for this course.

Majors Seminar

Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors.

PHIL UN3912 Section 001
Critical Theory: Music, Film, and Technology
L. Goehr
M 6:10pm-8:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
Instructor permission required.

PHIL UN3912 Section 002 
Ordinary Language Philosophy
W. Mann
M 10:10am-12:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
Please complete this form prior to registering for this course. 

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PHIL BC4050
Aesthetics and Creativity
C. Prodoehl
W 4:10pm-6:00pm; 111 Milstein Cen
Intensive study of a philosophical issue or topic, or of a philosopher, group of philosophers, or philosophical school or movement. Open only to Barnard senior philosophy majors.

4000-level courses are open to advanced undergraduate students and graduate students.

4000-Level Lectures

PHIL GU4090 Early Greek Philosophy
K. Vogt
T 2:10pm-4:00pm; 606 Martin Luther King Building
The course offers an advanced introduction to key thinkers in Early Greek Philosophy, including Thales, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, the atomists Leucippus and Democritus, and Protagoras. Early Greek philosophers asked questions about appearances and reality, nature, the human capacity to gain knowledge, perception, disagreement, and the different ways of life that people consider “natural.” They formulate arguments of perennial interest on what should be considered fundamental, whether motion can only be explained if there is void, the nature of knowledge, and whether relativism is compelling. The class is inspired by recent research that addresses this period and novel questions that have emerged.

4000-Level Seminars

PHIL4717 Topics in Moral Psychology 
F. Russell 
T 2:00-4:00 pm; 407 Barnard Hall
TOPIC: Freud. An intensive study of a particular topic in Moral Psychology.

PHIL GU4801 Mathematical Logic I
T. Lando
W 12:10pm-2:00pm; 520 Mathematics Building

ECON GU4950 Economies & Philosophy Seminar
J. Collins & B. O'Flaherty
T 10:10am-12:00pm; 308A Lewisohn Hall
This course is for Econ/Phil majors only. Please contact Laura Yan ([email protected]) in the Economics Department for any registration questions.

MATH GU4200 Mathematics & The Humanities
J. Clarke-Doane & M. Harris
T 4:10pm-6:00pm; 301M Fayerweather
Mathematics and philosophy have an ancient association. Euclid was a member of Plato's Academy, which is supposed to have read 'Let no one ignorant of geometry enter' above the door. Since then, philosophical questions have motivated mathematical research, and mathematical developments have informed philosophical activity. In this seminar, we discuss problems at the intersection of philosophy and mathematics, including: What is a mathematical proof? How does mathematical proof relate to formal proof in the sense of philosophers? What are the limitations of formal proof, and what bearing do they have on the philosophy of mathematics? Is the philosophy of mathematical practice different from the philosophy of mathematics? How do we select mathematical axioms? Is there ‘one true mathematics’ or could mathematics have been very different? What is mathematical understanding; is it only accessible to professional mathematicians, or to humans more generally? Do we understand infinity? What is the role of mathematics in culture broadly? How does its philosophy affect this?

PHIL GU4675 The Direction of Time
D. Albert
T 12:10pm-2:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
A survey of the various attempts to reconcile the macroscopic directionality of time with the time-reversibility of the fundamental laws of physics. The second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy, statistical mechanics, cosmological problems, the problems of memory, the possibility of multiple time direction.

PHIL GU4810 Lattices and Boolean Algebras 
T. Lando
T 6:10pm-8:00pm; 507 Philosophy Hall

Graduate Lectures

PHIL GR5415 Symbolic Logic
A. Varzi
MW 10:10am-11:25am; 402 Chandler Hall 
Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable. Note: Due to significant overlap, students may receive credit for only one of the following three courses: PHIL UN3411, UN3415, GR5415.

Graduate Seminars

PHIL GR6100 MA Research Seminar
W. Mann
T 10:10am-12:00pm; 315 Hamilton Hall
The MA Research Seminar supports the research projects of MA students in Philosophy. Participants practice key methods in philosophy and deepen their knowledge of classic and contemporary contributions to the field. The seminar is suitable for everyone who is aiming to write a research paper. Seminar participants receive detailed input throughout the semester. Students can take the class at any stage during their studies for the MA. The class is graded Pass/Fail.

PHIL GR6550 Philosophy of Journalism
D. Jagannathan
W 4:10pm-6:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall

PHIL GR6881 1st Year Proseminar in Philosophy
J. Clarke-Doane
M 6:10pm-8:00pm; 507 Philosophy

PHIL GR9350 Special Topics in Philosophy
Section 001 Bayesianism and Temporalism
M. Fusco
W 10:20am-12:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
This seminar is about some connections between accuracy-first epistemology and formal semantics.

Accuracy-first accounts of rational learning are guided by the idea that credence, like belief, aims at objective truth. On the formal epistemology side, standard results in this literature (Greaves & Wallace, 2006; Leitgeb & Pettigrew, 2010) support Conditionalization as the rational way to update one’s credences. In this literature, credal norms are scored according to the size of the gap between the posterior they recommend for each atomic φ in the object language and V(φ), the objective, or vindicated, truth about φ. The vindicated truth about φ, in turn, is settled by the indicator function of a possible world.

On the semantics side, it is unclear how the concept of vindication extends from worlds to the general notion of a semantic index, in the sense of Lewis’s “Index, Context, and Content” (1980). Some semantic systems, after all, lack possible worlds altogether (Fine, 2017); other semantic frameworks such as Kaplan (1989)’s for temporal operators, and Kocurek (2022)’s for counterfactuals, employ indices that consist of a pair of parameters, one of which is neither a possible world nor supervenes on a possible world-setting.

Getting clarity on the vindication question is of very general interest to work at the intersection of these fields.

Section 002 Identity, Personhood, and Freedom in Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
A. Bilgrami & C. Rovane
T 6:10pm-8:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
Identity, autonomy, and the law

PHIL GR9515 Topics in Metaphysics
Section 001 Mereology
A. Varzi
W 2:10pm-4:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
Section 002 An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Metaphysics
J. Clarke-Doane
W 6:10pm-8:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall

PHIL GR9525 Topics in Philosophy of Language
K. Lewis
M 12:10pm-2:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
This course focuses on an advanced topic in the philosophy of language.

PHIL GR9658 Advanced Topics in Philosophy of Mind
BY INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION ONLY
C. Peacocke
R 2:10pm-4:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
The first half of this seminar will be devoted to applying a theory of the nature of understanding and the individuation of intentional content to various classical and recent philosophical problems, including: the nature of deductive reasoning; the relation of concept-possession to our understanding of morality and the possibility of developing a moral realism; the relation of spatial perception and understanding to simulated reality; the nature of justification, its relation to the a priori, Kantian issues, and the development of a Fourth Way, different from the classical positions of Quine, Carnap, and Gödel. The second half of the seminar will apply the theory of intentional content to explaining features of our perception of music, its emotional and affective content, its relation to the perception of particular sound events, to expression, and, if there is time, to the relations between music and other art forms, including dance and poetry.

PHIL GR9750 Topics in Political Philosophy
BY INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION ONLY
M. Moody-Adams
T 2:10pm-4:00pm; 716 Philosophy Hall
The topic of this course is the problems and possibilities of democratic citizenship